Susan's Choice
by Jesuslovesmarina
Summary: A 2- or 3- part blip of Susan and Peter's lives after hearing their cousin and siblings' experiences in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Peter loves talking about Narnia and what they learned there, and believes Aslan is a real person, even in their world. Susan, however, doesn't want to remember... Annnd I don't own Narnia, etc., etc., etc. Please review and Merry Christmas!
1. Chapter 1

Your Choice, and Mine

"Susan!" Peter panted, running up beside her with a huge grin on his handsome face. "You'll never guess! Edmund and Lucy have been in Narnia!" He stood back in anticipation, waiting impatiently to hear her response.

"Oh!" Susan exclaimed, turning to face him rather abruptly. The look on her face made Peter look at her rather inquisitively. "Those- poor children. Eustace must've driven them mad."

"Well, that's just it!" Peter continued, growing more and more excited. He stuck his hands deep down in his pockets like a boy, and he knew she hated it when he did that. "Eustace went with them too! Aslan's changed him, Su. He's still Eustace, for certain. But he so different you'd hardly recognize him! Wait till you see!" He took her arm and started jogging along beside her, moving her quickly through the station toward the outside.

"Peter!" she exclaimed, flopping after him in a very ungraceful fashion to keep up. "You can't mean that this is all you're so excited about, can you?"

"What do you mean?" Peter laughed.

"I mean,_ really_! It's not as if Narnia _matters_ any more to us. It's just a game we played as children!"

"What? I missed what you said!"

"Peter! You heard me! I said it was a game. Now tell me you've had something else in your life to get you more excited than playing with the children?"

Peter stopped and faced her, confused. "Playing with the children? Susan, what are you talking about? Edmund and Lucy had some incredible adventures in Narnia- Eustace is a changed boy! I daresay- more changed than we were when we first came back from our adventures."

Susan gave a short laugh. "I'll believe it when I see it! But really, Peter, you should get a life. You have so many talents that could be put to better use than in hunting for Aslans."

Peter blinked, not quite getting what she was saying. "Aslans? Su, are you all right? You're not making sense."

She smiled casually at his concern. "I think you're the one who's not making sense. But when did we ever understand each other anyway?" She took his arm this time and began to lead him away, feeling a certain affection for her brother's comical ways.

Peter hesitated for a moment, then let his arm slip out of hers. She turned back to see him standing there, staring at her.

After a moment, she grew a little concerned. "What is it?"

Peter dropped his head for a moment, licked his lips, and spoke. "Susan," he asked in a queer tone of voice, "Do you wish- you'd never been to Narnia?"

Something rubbed at a sore spot inside of her. "I-" she looked away, not knowing why. "I really don't care, Peter. It was all just a game."

"Is that really what you think?" Peter exclaimed, nearly in a whisper.

"Peter- this is stupid!" she started to say, feeling terribly uncomfortable. She didn't know what to think. Why was it such a big deal to him?

"Because that's odd!" Peter said, starting to sound frightened, and she told herself she had no idea why. "You spent almost half your life in Narnia! You were older in Narnia than you are now! And you're not the same as you were at your age."

"Why can't you leave me alone? It's all just in your imagination- a child's fantasy- don't try to impose it on me, Peter Pevensie!"

It came out harsher than she had expected. He opened his mouth to say something in protest, but somehow she couldn't stop herself from continuing.

"Life is hard!" she yelled at him. "What- do you expect me to grow up to be so innocent and childlike, when there's war and poverty and trouble and- _people_ everywhere! Why do you expect me to be like- to be like-_ you_?!"

"Like _me_?" Peter gasped. "Do you have any idea what I would give to be young again? To fight in battles where all I had to use was my head and my sword, not to struggle with books and bad tempers and professors, and wondering if Aslan's even there?"

"That's your trouble!" Susan shouted. "He isn't there, Peter! Why don't you just man up and live life the way you were supposed to, without all this Narnia, Narnia, Narnia!?"

"Never!" he shouted back, the expression on his face pure determination and shock.

By this time dozens of people in the station were staring at them, or else politely giving them an extremely wide berth.

Susan and Peter looked at them, then at each other, and began shuffling toward the exit again.

"I'm sorry, Su," Peter said finally, swallowing hard.

She swung her arms and legs even faster, pumping them hard as she rushed toward the exit. Somehow his apology only made it worse.

"Susan!" he grabbed her arm as she was about to go out the door. She swung around to face him, without a choice.

"I won't talk about Narnia if you don't want me to," he said quietly.

Someting in her broke. "Oh, Peter, why did I get so upset over that? And here I was ironically trying to tell you it was trivial."

"I do have an important question to ask you about _Aslan_," Peter continued soberly, "but I promise not to talk to you about _Narnia_ unless you want me to."

"Peter, I don't mind a little Narnia. It's all in fun, right?" Smiling again, she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. He held her a little tighter than usual, and did not smile in return.

As they walked outside, friends once more, Susan noticed a pretty young woman with curly dark hair pulled back in a neat bun sitting in the blue station wagon she knew to be Peter's. Immediately she turned on him. "Who's this?"

Peter blushed to his neck, but he didn't look at her, just in the other woman's direction. "Ah- well- " he stuttered for the right words, "-She's really nice!"

Susan laughed and laughed. "She'd better be if she's with a man like you!" she teased, although she meant it perfectly seriously.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

The lone wardrobe had sat in the same room, in the same house, for many a year, even after the old professor had long since lost his fortune and left it. He had wanted more than anything to take it with him, but knowing so many more people would get to see it and, possibly, find some magic in it if it was left behind for the museum, he let it stay.

Susan's hair was up in a clip and her hat fastened to a T, makeup and clothing perfectly straight and full of beauty in the fashion of the day, when she made her visit. She smiled politely at the lady admitting tourists and followed a much older Mrs. Mackready on the same tour she and the kids had once played hide-and-seek to keep away from.

It was ironic how the lady had changed. Before, so strict and stern it seemed as if nothing could get through to her. Now, perhaps because she was no longer a child, Susan saw a new form of attractiveness in her. Some of the old harshness seemed gone, and although she carried herself erect and rarely smiled, Susan was impressed that she did, on occasion, crack a broad grin at a member of the tour group.

The old woman may or may not have recognized her, but Susan really didn't care. She simply felt drawn back to the old house, wanting to visit, to reminisce.

Not surprisingly, the wardrobe room was not on the list of rooms the average tour would cover; although Susan remembered the location exactly and knew how to find it easily. After seeing the green room and the India room and the bedrooms they had all stayed in, Susan slipped behind the small group and let herself into the one she had most come to see.

Carefully, she shut the door behind her, taking care not to let it creak too loudly.

There was something about the smell of the old room; dust coating the floor, a few streaks of light pouring in from the dirt-washed windows, dead flies that sat on the windowsill. Eerily quiet, it brought back a wash of memories to her now-grown adult mind.

_Laughter and screaming as they hid from Edmund; rain pouring down outside. Again, and they hid from Peter as they continued, and suddenly realized Lucy was missing. They'd found her in here, standing in front of the wardrobe with cheeks rosy with excitement and a secret none of them knew but her, and her alone. The best of all games had begun with the wardrobe, and her little sister. _

Susan remembered her own stupid grown-up mother act as she had smiled sweetly at the little girl (how little she knew then about actual grown-up behavior) and proceeded to open the wardrobe and knock on the wood at the back of it. (Just for good measure).

A broad smile stretched across her face now, and, simply out of sentiment, she walked up to the great wooden box in four ladylike strides and cracked open the door. It was even more immense than she had remembered. She stepped forward, up into it, feeling the homelike sensation that gave even Susan Pevensie an excuse to break the usual adult rules of not 'touching the historical artifacts'.

She inhaled deeply, grasping her hat to make sure it stayed on straight as she pushed through the leathery coats and their soft, silky fur. She realized for the first time what expensive coats they had been. Looking at the designs in the dim light left from outside (for one must never shut oneself into a wardrobe), Susan knew that these were worth more each than she made in a month of work as an editorial assistant.

It left her breathless as she remembered the flippant way she and the kids had played with them and dragged them around on the dusty floor, slipping on fur and likely damaging some of it, too. The professor was quite a man for letting them carry on the way they had. She assumed now that he probably knew more about their activities than they'd realized at the time.

He probably knew all about the cricket-ball hole in the stained glass window downstairs, and the suit of armor they'd knocked over, too.

Smirking happily to herself, she continued to step forward, pushing piles of coats out of the way. They seemed to keep going and going, and she almost got a strange, huge lump in her throat, when finally she pushed aside the last layer and put her hand out to touch the wooden back. Swallowing what she knew could never have been—_disappointment_—she stroked the back and, just for good, sentimental measure, knocked twice, firmly, on the wood before turning to exit the wardrobe.


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

Stepping out and back onto the proper floor of the room, Susan regained her composure and tried brushing some of the seemingly magnetic dust from her blouse and skirt. It came off of her in clouds and she groaned inwardly. How would she ever slip out of here unseen? She could never let the tour group see her like _this_.

Just then, she could have sworn she heard a soft whisper behind her, like the rush of wind through the trees. Startled, she swung around to face the wardrobe, where the door still swung open on its hinges. However, impossible as it was, it was rocking back and forth just slightly, as if there truly was a breeze coming from—

_No._ She shook her head to clear it. She was getting totally carried away by her reminiscing. Giving her skirt one last mournful pat to brush the dust away, she turned on one heel of her best shoes and strutted toward the door, trying to suppress the excited smile that threatened to explode on her lips. It was just so _adventurous_, exploring the big old house again, breaking the rules, reliving the past. It was so childish but she couldn't help but feel delighted with the experience.

Suddenly, she couldn't help herself. She had turned and was running, jumping back into the wardrobe, pushing back through the coats _just one last time!_ Just to make sure, she told herself, but it was almost as if she was being led, pushed into it by some unseen force.

Susan gasped aloud as her hand touched something prickly, and cold. She pushed aside the remaining coats with trembling hands, when what should appear to her awestruck eyes, than a snowy wood, with a frozen lamppost gleaming high above the lonely wardrobe door.

Her eyes closed and she could still feel the cold, as she took one more step, then another.

When she opened them again, it was still there. Unchanged, all magical and beautiful as it had been when she was a young teen.

A deep breath, the cold filling her lungs as snow began to fall.

Then she felt something tug at her heart, all the memories of the things they did in Narnia threatening to spill from her eyes and she choked back a sob, stepping back.

"It can't be real," she found herself saying, tearfully. "It isn't real. Narnia isn't real!"

She took another step back, nearly tripping and falling as one of her high heels slipped on the melting snow.

She grabbed onto one of the coats and hauled herself back up. Unable to bear it anymore, she burst into tears and fled from the wardrobe, back into the dusty old room, shoes clattering onto the floor as she landed in a heap.

It was awhile before her tears abated. Her mind, even when confronted with the plain image of the wood they'd explored years before, refused to accept an impossible reality.

"It's not for me," she whispered softly, sniffling and struggling to wipe away the tears with her handkerchief. "But it was a nice reminder." Somehow, her self-comfort wasn't helping her feel any better.

"But I can't go back. I can't live in a world that isn't real."

"_It's far more real than your world,"_ a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind.

Susan ignored it. They were just children then, she reminded herself. She was a fully grown adult, a young woman with a reputation to uphold, an image to maintain, goals to accomplish and—well, money to make.

With that, she gathered herself, brushing the dust off as best she could, and fixing her hair in the reflection of the window. She readjusted the strap on her heeled shoe, so it wouldn't slip again on the steep old stairway, and carefully slipped out of the room.

Down the stairs she went, through the hallways, without revealing herself to the tour group. She cracked open the main door and hugged her thin jacket around her as she stepped outside.

When had it gotten so cold?

Why, there were even clouds in the sky, whereas when she had come in for the tour, it had been sunny and almost warm.

She shivered. It was a long walk to the train station, this far out in the country. She wished she had brought a bigger coat. As she walked, it started to snow. Eventually she got to the station, but for some reason, the train wouldn't come.

Little did Susan know that further down the line, there had been a terrible wreck.

Two cars had been overturned, and a handful of people had died instantly. Many more were injured.

And at that moment, her brothers and sister, along with the Professor, Cousin Eustace, Jill, and several others, were once again kings and queens in Narnia.

She had missed them.


End file.
